


Honey, I'm still free

by Aja



Category: Angels in America - Kushner, Angels in America - Kushner (Broadway Cast 2018) RPF, British Actor RPF, Broadway RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Beaches, Denial of Feelings, Fake/Pretend Relationship, I'm just going to keep doing the ABBA song titles apparently, LET'S FIND OUT, M/M, Mutual Pining, Ridiculousness, Tony night, UST, boys being giant messes, gratuitous i love yous, gratuitous makeouts, how many times can i write McArfield making out on Tony night?, yurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:37:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: Written for the prompt, "Andrew and James not actually ever addressing their feelings for each other during the run and sort of staying in contact but not really after closing until they see each other at some event in New York or London and realize they still have those feelings and maybe they get together then, maybe they don’t but it’s like this “oh shit” moment where they realize months apart didn’t change much."And I immediately screwed this prompt up, OH WELL, I had a blast writing it, thank you anyway. <3In which Andrew and James are giant messes and James is in denial and there is MUCH blurring of feelings and sexual frustration and much making out.





	Honey, I'm still free

Andrew doesn’t mean to kiss James. It happens by accident, each time it happens.

The first time, they’re a few months into the NT production and James is having trouble with his costume when Andrew walks into his dressing room for their pre-show ritual. It’s not much of a ritual, they just sit for a moment and chat and do occasional line runs if they’re feeling jittery, but Andrew always comes to James’s room for it, because he’s secretly afraid that if he doesn’t go to James, James won’t come to him; and that would sting in a way he’s not really ready to think about.

Anyway, James is having costume trouble — his coat zipper’s gotten hilariously wedged in the fabric, as zippers do, and Andrew bats James’s hands away and sets to work, ignoring James’s teasing and fussing, and gradually works it looser until it finally pops free.

James laughs, “Thank god, you’re a miracle worker,” and Andrew straightens his coat lapels and gives him a fond pat and kisses him.

If he’d given it any thought, it would have been a simple peck. Instead, the moment their lips touch, it’s a real kiss, the kiss of longtime lovers — which they essentially are by this point.

There’s the initial shock of recognition, and then their lips are parting, and James inhales sharply but doesn’t pull back, and for a white-hot instant everything shorts out in Andrew’s brain, and his entire world narrows down to the sensation of James’s tongue sliding against his, their bodies aligning, their breath mingling, this feeling of complete and utter _rightness_.

Except then, just as the kiss is deepening, just as Andrew’s hands are tugging James closer, James pulls away abruptly. He takes a step back and collects himself. Andrew stares at him, aware that blank shock is written all over his face.

After a moment, James breaks into a laugh. He leans forward and kisses Andrew on the forehead. “Thank you,” he says again, brusquely. “I’m going to have to hire you to be my personal wardrobe consultant if that’s the treatment I get.”

“Couldn’t afford me,” Andrew shoots back automatically, shaken and relieved to have the comfort of banter to fall back on. “That was a one-time freebie.”

“I just can never have a wardrobe malfunction again, then,” James laughs, and he steers the conversation to something completely safe and mundane, and Andrew is dazzled by it, how completely he lets it all roll off of him.

Andrew always thinks that about James — that he’s incredible at just... not absorbing the baggage and the stress and the deep emotional confusion that comes with doing this play. But god, that _kiss_ , it’s embedded within him; how can it not be, when Andrew’s lips still tingle at the memory, when he still has the burning impression of what it felt like to have all James’s passionate intensity directed at him offstage.

He gets it directed at him every night, of course — and there are innumerable moments when he, as Andrew and as Prior, feels drawn so sharply to James and James-as-Louis that it makes his head spin. He’s certain James can tell. There are more than a few nights when their lingering touches make each other hard onstage, and they’re used to accepting that as a side effect of the job, not a real emotional concern.

James is _always_ completely professional around Andrew, though — far more than Andrew, who flirts as naturally as breathing, manages to be around James. Only instead of making Andrew feel embarrassed or mortified by his utter lack of receptiveness, James rolls with every accidental come-on and blurted innuendo Andrew drops and somehow manages to make him feel warm and embraced, as if no amount of line-blurring will jeopardize the core of them. And it’s reassuring, on one level, and frustrating on another level, and sweet on all levels, and above all it’s just quintessentially James, and it only endears him to Andrew even more.

And that’s how things are for the better part of a year. When they part at the end of the London production, and when they meet back up again in New York four months later, James kisses him sweetly, lingeringly, and still somehow so platonically despite all of their intimacy that Andrew nearly laughs.

In New York, he and James ramp up their levels of physical affection considerably — not consciously, but very clearly, perhaps inevitably, given how determined they both are to make their performances even more realistic and believable.

And Andrew isn’t going to front, he’s been having a hard time handling it. Every touch, every look, every mingled breath erodes the protective barriers around his heart, and he _knows_ that James is better than that, and that James expects him to be better, more professional than that; but also, he’d like to see James McArdle have to make out with James McArdle every night for two years and walk away from the experience unscathed.

Then, what Andrew can only think of as the Incident happens. They’re a month into the Broadway run, and they’re all having a shitty time navigating the layout of the Neil Simon, and the infuriating number of stairs between them and their dressing rooms. Andrew is having a shitty fucking two-show day, his whole performance is out of balance and he can’t find his way back into it, and he’s spent the final hour of _Perestroika_ shaky and on the verge of tears out of pure stress, when he realizes he’s left his goddamn glasses in the pocket of the Epilogue coat that’s still in his dressing room, and it’s such a little thing, but as he’s coming out of the final hospital scene with James, he realizes they’re missing.

Suddenly he’s trembling all over, sobs threatening to overtake him at any moment, and he can’t — he can’t remember his lines, he’s going to fucking ruin the ending of the play, _Christ_ , and just when he thinks he’s actually going to have a full-blown panic attack, James’s arms are suddenly around him and his voice is soft against Andrew’s ear.

“Hey,” James says, holding him tight. “Hey, look at me, right here. Andrew. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

Andrew looks at him gratefully, only he’s so beautiful and earnest and fucking talented that it makes him feel _worse_ for being such a fuck-up, and he burbles, “I forgot my fucking glasses, I—” and James shushes him and starts to murmur something pacifying, and then suddenly he cups Andrew’s face in his hands and kisses him.

Andrew kisses back, shocked out of panic and into disbelief. He kisses James with all the feeling he’s been suppressing over months of barely concealed longing, and James holds him close and just... lets him. For a long moment the only thing Andrew knows is the way James’s body feels against his, the way he relaxes into the kiss, pours wordless reassurance into it, parts his lips briefly for air and then returns to drag his teeth along Andrew’s lower lip and stroke Andrew’s tongue with his own until Andrew gasps and shudders and pulls away, trembling for an entirely different reason.

“See,” James says, and he pulls Louis’s glasses off and sets them gently on Andrew’s face. “Everything’s totally fine.”

Andrew blinks, adjusts, re-rights his world. “Thank you,” he says softly, unsure what else he can possibly say.

James gives him a lopsided smile. “Come on,” he says, and he laces their fingers together and tugs Andrew up the stairs.

Things are inevitably... delicate between them for a bit after that. But the production rolls along, and every performance is such a marathon that they don’t really have time to dwell on what happened the day before, let alone a week ago.

And thus it might have continued, but for Tony night.

Awards season has wrung them all out, and James especially has seemed fed up and exasperated with the entire scene; but on Tony night, he’s suddenly perfectly polished and practically bespoke, and Andrew can’t take his eyes off him. To give himself an out, he sticks near the door at the after party, drinks heavily, and flirts shamelessly with anyone who comes near him. That’s mostly the bevvy of random girls who always pop up at these events. It is not, however, James.

At least, not until late, very late, in the evening, when Andrew is fully soused and James is suddenly standing before him, saying, “There’s a Times photographer who wants a photo of the two of us.”

“The one over by that mirror window thing,” Andrew slurs.

“The very same.”

“Why the two of us?” Andrew asks, slipping off the couch and following James over to the other side of the ballroom. “Does she know something I don’t?”

James looks back at him, smiling. “You’re drunk,” he says.

“You’re drunk,” Andrew accuses.

“That’s very possible,” James says.

“I won a Tony,” Andrew says unhelpfully.

James beams at him. “You certainly did,” he says, and tugs him over to the loveseat next to the window.

“How do we do this?” Andrew asks, as James settles against the window. “Should I sit in your lap?”

“I think you can just kneel behind me,” James says.

“No, scoot in closer,” says the photographer. James gives Andrew a wry look and shrugs. Andrew kneels behind him and slumps forward and slings his arms around James’s neck.

“People will say we’re in love,” James murmurs.

“Tease,” Andrew mutters.

“Make love to the camera,” the photographer orders, and Andrew fixes it with his best come-hither look. Next to him James just tilts his head back and gives her an even stare, and Andrew wants to bite the tendon of his neck until he begs for more.

“Do you want another one?” Andrew asks the photographer helpfully.

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

Andrew turns to James, arms still slung around him. “You’ve been avoiding me all night,” he says. “Why?”

“You’ve been busy,” James says. He disengages himself from Andrew and stands. Andrew gets to his feet, a little shakily.

“Never too busy for you,” he says. “You look amazing, by the way.”

James rolls his eyes.

“I’m grabbing another cocktail,” Andrew says, brushing himself off. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m good,” says James, and then he adds, “but that’s the balcony, not the bar, the bar is in the opposite direction,” and he steers Andrew the right way round.

“Oh,” says Andrew primly. “Good of you to join me.”

“You’re a passive-aggressive drunk,” James says, sounding amused. “Who would have thought it?”

“Why would I be passive-aggressive to you?” Andrew asks. “To my dear James McArdle?”

He arrives at the bar and orders a double martini. James comes up behind him and puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I dunno,” he says. “But if you’ve anything to say, you know you can always tell me, any time, love.”

Andrew snorts. He takes his drink gingerly from the bartender and sips it daintily.

“Talking,” he says, after he’s drunk his fill. “That’s exactly what I want to do.“

James narrows his eyes. “I think I’ll have a double as well,” he tells the bartender.

“Ha,” says Andrew.

James sends him a rueful look and doesn't say a word. When the bartender hands him his drink, he drains the entire glass in one go.

“Right,” he says, setting the empty martini glass back on the counter. He takes Andrew’s arm lightly and pulls him down the hallway.

“Ooh,” says Andrew. “This is an interesting development.”

“The things I do for you,” James says. He finds an empty room and tugs Andrew inside. After a moment of blinking at one another awkwardly, he closes the door.

“Talk,” he says.

“No,” Andrew says, stepping into his arms. James freezes. Andrew cautiously snakes an arm around James’s back, wordlessly asking permission. James meets his gaze and bites his lip, then drops his eyes to Andrew’s mouth and stares, transfixed. Andrew presses closer, arches up, cups the back of James’s neck. They’re almost touching; it’s almost perfect.

He brushes the tip of his nose against James’s jawline. James takes a deep shuddering breath, and then he bends to press a hot, wet kiss against Andrew’s neck.

It’s electric. Andrew gasps, and James’s arms are suddenly tight around his waist, holding him fast. Andrew tilts his head back, and James trails a steady line of kisses over his throat, up his jaw to his temple. Andrew closes his eyes and breathes in, breathes out, and for a moment they’re frozen there, James lips paused uncertainly against his skin.

“Baby,” Andrew whispers, and James, finally, meets Andrew’s mouth, kissing him slow and deep, pulling Andrew flush against him and cupping Andrew’s face in his hand as he explores Andrew’s lips until they’re buzzing.

“You are so bad for my self-control,” James mutters against his lips, biting Andrew’s lower one and smiling around the gasp he provokes.

“Good,” Andrew breathes, and James pushes him against the door and runs his thumb in a delicious caress down the curve of Andrew’s neck before following the path with his lips.

“This isn’t real,” James murmurs, biting down on Andrew’s collarbone. “This is the play, not us.”

“What?” Andrew tugs James’s head and then kisses him urgently. James slips his tongue inside Andrew’s mouth and Andrew moans helplessly into the kiss. James shivers and aligns their hips against each other, pressing Andrew firmly back against the door, and Andrew thrusts against him before he can control himself, gasping at the contact.

For one stultifying moment, James responds, and they grind against each other shamelessly, and Andrew’s eyes flutter open, dazed and dilated, to see James’ half-lidded in arousal.

“We’re not even in a theatre,” Andrew tells him. He feels floaty, drunker and yet soberer than he’s felt all evening. He leans forward and bites the tendon of James’s neck, the one he was fantasizing about earlier.

James shudders. “Andrew,” he says, and he sounds wrecked and torn and guilty, and something cold spikes through Andrew.

“Don’t,” he says, pulling James’s hips into him.

“This _isn’t us_ ,” James says, and he finally wrenches himself apart from Andrew.

Andrew stares at him, bereft, suddenly utterly empty. “Then,” he says, unable to suppress the horrible cold shiver that seizes him, “ _why did you bring me in here?_ ”

James starts to answer, and then evidently realizes there’s nothing he can really say in response.

“It’s a good thing we established that this is all just the play and none of this is real,” Andrew says calmly, “before one of us did anything _rash_. Before I said something I couldn’t take back, for instance.”

James looks stricken. He reaches up and touches Andrew’s face. Andrew winces. “You are the loveliest being on the planet,” James says, “and I adore you.” Andrew laughs a hollow laugh. “But you have _zero_ distance between yourself and Prior, and we both know that. And I have too much distance between myself and Louis to let this go further than it should. Not now, not — I’m sorry.”

Andrew’s stomach is knotted tight. He takes a breath, then another. His head hurts. But at least he’s sober.

“You’re absolutely right,” he says after a moment. “I’m straight. You’re straight. This is all just the play.”

James makes an abortive motion towards him. His hand is still cupping Andrew’s face. Andrew gingerly removes it.

“Andrew,” James whispers.

“It’s fine,” Andrew says. He’s suddenly exhausted. “It’s out of our systems. It’s fine.”

“Please,” James says, grabbing his hand and pressing it earnestly, “don’t let this fuck things up between us.”

Andrew gives him a wry smile. “You’d never let that happen,” he says.

James swallows. Andrew exhales and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll see you on Wednesday,” he says softly, and he gives James’s hand a squeeze on his way out.

So, in the end, they are both very professional. And James remains sweet and beautiful and understanding to the last, and Andrew’s heart was already breaking nightly anyway, so in the end, layering one more hurt on top of hurt doesn’t really matter all that much.

On the final night, after the last curtain call, everyone is sobbing and crying and hugging each other, and because Andrew is a complete loser he watches James move into Lee’s space, because he’s pathetic, because he’s more than a little jealous for no reason whatsoever, because he has to know what this moment between them looks like.

He watches Lee grab onto James with his huge long arms, yanking him into a massive bear hug. He watches James go in for the hug and give him a cheek kiss and grab his arm in the manliest way possible, and something in Andrew crumples at the thought that this is how they’ll part. Maybe he just won’t hug James goodbye at all, maybe James won’t want that.

Only just as he’s thinking that, James is suddenly in front of him, pulling him close, holding him, holding onto him so tightly, and they’re both pressed against one another, crying, shuddering deep sobs against each other for who knows how long.

James pulls back a little, at last, and then he smiles messily at Andrew, red-faced and blotchy, tears everywhere, and leans in and kisses him slow and soft on the mouth. And it’s not any of the kisses they’ve shared before, it’s not urgent or demanding or reassuring. It’s just...  James saying goodbye.

“I love you,” James says after they break apart. “You know that. You know you can come to me if you ever need anything, day or night, even if you just want to do speed runs at three in the morning and can’t find anyone awake on Discord.”

Andrew laughs, and Andrew is a wreck, and Andrew doesn’t want to wake James up at three in the morning for _gaming_ ,  but he nods, and then because he can’t help himself he hugs James again, and stays there, eyes closed.

And because James is James, he lets Andrew stand there as long as he likes.

  
  
  
  
  


They don’t see each other for nine months.

They keep in touch, of course; Andrew is unerringly loyal, and for all James used to talk constantly about how he couldn’t wait to be away from all of them, the first week they’re apart, he sends Andrew a series of hilarious texts describing life back in Glasgow. There’s a selfie taken with a bunch of pub brawlers who paused the brawl long enough to pose for pics. There’s a suite of photos of newly poured sidewalk with a series of delightfully obscene messages hardening in the concrete. There’s one text that’s just a picture of James’s family’s house with the word “home.” Andrew keeps them all, but it takes him a while to respond.

They dodge each other in London — not intentionally, but their schedules aren’t lining up and that’s just how it is. Their movie premieres are on the same night, so Andrew winds up sending James a corsage like it’s prom night. James sends Andrew a case of scotch.

Andrew decouples himself from Prior Walter; he reconfigures himself. He spends a great deal of time fucking his way through a series of casual hookups — men, women, and everyone in-between. He learns a lot of things about queer sex and queer identity that he’d wish he’d known before playing a gay man, and he shares none of those things with anyone.

He does wonder if word has gotten around about his exploits. He wonders, sometimes, if James would have heard, if James would have... cared. There’s no sign of James dating after the show. There’s barely any sign of James at all, for a while, except for the occasional random emails and texts he sends Andrew.

He finally sees James again, of all places, at a yoga retreat.

He’s agreed to go on a group trip to the Caribbean that's organized as something called “Spafari.” It's supposed to land them all on a private island in the Turks, where they all have to sleep on the beach in tents and wake up at dawn to detox, and it sounds annoyingly relaxing, and he hasn’t been to the beach in a while, so he says yes. He’s used to not knowing many people at these sorts of things, so when his boat pulls up to the dock and _James McArdle_ is standing on the pier, drinking a bottle of beer in his favorite blue shirt, Andrew almost doesn’t know how to process it.

James is tanned and beautiful, his hair tousled and sun-bleached, and Andrew’s heart constricts so sharply at the sight of him he actually gets dizzy for a few seconds. It takes another moment for his brain to unfreeze enough to realize that he should stop staring, but no sooner has that thought occurred to him then James looks over and sees him, and his beer slips from his grasp and clunks harmlessly in the sand.

Andrew’s legs feel weak, but he forces himself to wobble off the boat and onto the pier, so unable to look away from James that the boat attendee has to speak up twice to remind him not to leave his duffel bag behind. Andrew hauls it out of the boat and then drops it on the dock before bypassing the other people standing around and going to James.

His eyes are so _blue_ , how has Andrew forgotten?

James is gaping at him, not trying to hide his shock.

“You,” Andrew says.

“ _You_ ,” says James.

They should hug, Andrew thinks.  

They don’t hug. He thinks if they touched right now, the contact might set him on fire.

“You... are out of your element,” Andrew says blankly.

James barks out a laugh, and his expression collapses into a huge, affectionate grin, and Andrew wants to look at him _forever_. He doesn’t know what to _do_ with himself, or with his hands, or what he’s even doing here at all, really.

“Denise was supposed to go on this thing,” James says. “She had to back out so she thought it’d be a good joke to send me instead.” They can’t stop _staring_ at each other, and Andrew’s heart is pounding, but he couldn’t look away if he tried.

“Denise,” he echoes. “She’s the one who introduced me to Sonje — she’s the one who invited me.”

“Ah,” says James. “Are the two of you...?”

“No,” Andrew says sharply. “Are... are you and Denise—”

“Andrew,” James says, and that one word somehow contains all the months of separation that have lain between them.

“You’re going to be sleeping in a _yurt_ ,” Andrew says.

James beams at him helplessly. “I’m trying to be open to new things,” he says.

“A _yurt_ , James McArdle,” says Andrew, beaming back.

“A yurt, Andrew Garfield,” says James, and his smile falters for a moment, and Andrew’s stomach flip-flops.

“Help me stake a claim to one of these yurts,” Andrew tells him, “and maybe I won’t tell anyone here how often you’ve said that yoga is for pussies.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” says James, going to the end of the dock and fetching Andrew’s duffel bag anyway. “What happens backstage stays backstage, remember?”

“I think the rule is actually, what happens backstage ends up on Datalounge,” says Andrew.

“Well, that would explain why the internet thinks I’m fucking Susan Brown,” James says, sending him a wink, and Andrew laughs so hard he chokes.

At sunset yoga, they sit in the back like recalcitrant school children and make irreverent jokes about yoga poses until Andrew is laughing so much his meditative breathing is a complete disaster, and the instructor threatens to kick them out unless they can be more mindful. James is mindful through the rest of class and then promptly spends dinner ranting about how the entire retreat is a total Goop-fest of new age woo and pseudoscience and probably a capitalist scam as well.

“That is probably all true, but counterpoint, these macarons are amazing,” Andrew says, feeding him one, and James moans and licks the meringue from Andrew’s fingers.

Later, there’s a bonfire, and multiple people with guitars, and the face James makes when they all bring out the guitars at once is so priceless that Andrew stands without a word and tugs him away down the beach.

“This is the part where we get eaten in _Jaws,_ ” James says cheerily.

“You literally never stop thinking about _Jaws_ , do you,” Andrew says.

“So far, this is the opening scene of _Jaws_ except with less booze,” says James. “And I’m not sure the shark cares about your blood alcohol content.”

“We’re not going in the water,” Andrew says. “Here.” He chooses a spot randomly facing the last glimmer of sunset and lies down.

“What are we doing?” James asks, joining him.

“We’re making sand angels,” says Andrew, and he demonstrates.

James looks at him for a moment and then laughs, low and fond. “Of course we are,” he says, and he proceeds to make his own sand angel next to Andrew’s.

When they’re done, they pick themselves up gingerly and look at their handiwork.

“Utterly angelic,” James pronounces.

“Do you think they’ll last through the night?” Andrew asks.

“They’re angels,” James says. “They’ll last forever.”

Andrew turns and looks at him.

“I used to think you let the play roll right off of you,” he says softly. “But you haven't. You never did.”

James’s face is always so expressive, and just now he's running through an array of emotions Andrew can't quite parse.

“I could never,” he says at last. “I'm sorry you ever thought that I wasn't, that I wasn't in it fully with you.”

“I didn't think that,” Andrew says. “I just thought that at the end of the day you had an easier time letting it all go.”

“That was self-preservation,” James replies. “I didn’t, it’s not that I didn’t internalize it. I just had to keep an eye on my own life, on what was real and —”

He blanches and looks appalled with himself, and Andrew is frankly surprised at how much this hurts, how much it feels like the months have fallen away, like that night was just yesterday. He can still feel James’s mouth on his skin.

“In the end,” he says, stepping closer — probably too close, but he can’t really help himself — “it was all real, though. We lived through it all. We did it all, we felt it all. It was all real.”

James doesn’t move away; instead he bends towards Andrew, and his eyes are wide and full of questions.

“Yes,” he says after a moment, almost a whisper.

As if on cue, down the beach, the guitarists strike up a soft, lush version of “Moon River.” James’s expression flickers in surprise and annoyance and fondness, and Andrew laughs at him.

“Dance with me, babe,” James says, smiling a little ruefully as he pulls Andrew into his arms.

Andrew laces his arms around James’s neck. “Hi,” he murmurs.

“Hi,” says James in the same hushed voice, and they stand there, not really moving, just holding one another. Andrew was right earlier: the touch is burning him slowly, inside-out.

“You always did love this part the best,” James says.

“Shh,” Andrew says. He rests his head on James’s chest and closes his eyes, listening to the waves and the music and the sound of James’s fluttering heart.

After another moment James drops a kiss against the top of Andrew’s head and tightens his embrace. They stay there until the sun finally slips from the horizon and the sky has turned cobalt, and they’re finally summoned back to the campfire by the promise of s’mores.

Back among the living, James settles against Andrew’s side on the sand, and steals his marshmallows, and puts his arm around Andrew’s waist when Andrew leans his head on James’s shoulder. And when someone casually asks how long the two of them have been dating, James answers calmly, over the sound of Andrew’s burble of pained laughter:

“Since 1981.”

At the end of the evening, James pulls Andrew to his feet and laces their fingers together, tugging him back down the beach toward their tents.

“Are you gonna invite me back to your yurt?” Andrew jokes, or at least he means it to be a joke, but it comes out sounding breathless and hot with anticipation.

James turns to him, laughing. “I can promise you I will never invite anyone back to my yurt.”

He runs his thumb over the underside of Andrew's wrist. Andrew steps closer, into the circle of James’s arms.

“James McArdle,” he murmurs.

“Andrew Garfield,” James responds gently.

Andrew runs his hand over James's dear, familiar face. The last time he was able to do this, James’ scruff was usually several days’ old, at least, always on the verge of becoming a full-blown beard. His cheeks are framed by stubble now, strategically well groomed, and his skin is still baby-soft beneath it. He still looks so much older, deceptively older, than he is, Andrew thinks, even though he’s he’s just turned 30 earlier this month.

Andrew feels a pang of loss at that,  at the idea of James celebrating without him, and it's this thought, more than any other, that drives home how much this has never been about Prior and Louis.

“Am I still bad for your self-control?” he whispers.

“Terrible,” James says, and Andrew waits for him to do something, anything, other than leaving them both on this endless cusp of wanting.

But James only leans forward and presses a soft kiss to Andrew’s forehead before he steps away. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, in a tight voice, as if the truth is being slowly pulled out of him in half-utterances. “I missed you.” And then he ends, sounding a little helpless, “I have to — goodnight,” and flees into his tent.  
  


 

 

The next morning, James is absent from their sunrise yoga class, not that Andrew can blame him, and he spends the morning lazing around, waiting for James to emerge from his yurt, only to find James gone for a run and then somehow on the opposite side of their pick-up beach volleyball match.

After lunch, most of the group, including James, opt to go on a coral dive on the other side of the island, but Andrew chooses to park himself under a shady palm and read the sequel to _Crazy Rich Asians_. He’s in the middle of swooning over Astrid and Charlie’s longsuffering romance when one of the other guys from the group comes over and starts shamelessly hitting on him.

A few unencouraging responses from Andrew, plus a few more blatant dropped hints, don’t do the trick to ward him off; and it’s not like Andrew’s not used to this sort of thing, but it doesn’t normally happen in a private setting, and it’s unnerving. Plus, they’re on a small island, there’s nowhere really for him to escape to except into the sea, and there aren’t a whole lot of other people around.

He texts James before he thinks too hard about it: _I’ve attracted a fuckboy. so gross._

Then he closes his book and sits and tunes out the obtuse asshole next to him as he goes on and on about himself.

He doesn’t really know what he’s expecting, but it’s not for James himself to join him on the beach barely ten minutes later, still in his swim trunks.

“Hi,” Andrew says in surprise, and then his gaze snags on the water still clinging to James’s bare chest, and he loses his train of thought.

“Hey,” James says, kneeling next to him.

“Did you see any coral?”

“Coral was indeed seen,” James says. “God, this place is gorgeous.” He holds out a hand to the fuckboy and says, “Hi,” which is hilarious because Fuckboy hasn’t even introduced himself to Andrew, and he looks affronted at the idea.

“Sorry,” says the fuckboy. “We were just having a private conversation.” Andrew sends James a longsuffering look.

James actually laughs. “Were you,” he says incredulously, and Andrew snickers and leans over and drops a kiss against his bare shoulder.

“Yeah,” says the fuckboy. “And just who the fuck are you?”

James fixes the fuckboy with a cold look for a moment, and then he turns to Andrew.

“I’m the guy who gets to do this,” he says, and he curls his arm around Andrew and kisses him.

For the first time, there’s nothing hesitant about him; he takes Andrew’s mouth in his like it belongs to him, like Andrew is his to take whenever he wants, and Andrew sort of squeaks and melts against him with a gasp and a shudder.

Andrew kisses James back until he’s dizzy, until James’s arms are the only thing keeping him upright. They break apart briefly for air and James tilts Andrew’s head back and cups his chin and mouths the underside of Andrew’s jaw, just as he did that night so many months ago, before returning to explore Andrew’s mouth. Andrew sighs helplessly into the kiss and runs his hands over James’s bare chest, his back, over every part of him he can touch.

He feels like he might float away.

It’s not until James inevitably kisses open the buttons of Andrew’s shirt and bears him down against the sand, linking their hands together and kissing him breathless once more, that Andrew regains enough coherence to realize they’re now completely alone.

“Tell me this isn’t just sense memory,” he gasps, curving into James’s touch. “Not just you being chivalrous.”

“I’m such a complete _fool_ ,” James answers, voice gone hoarse. He nips Andrew’s throat and lets out a moan when Andrew responds by arching up and seeking friction.

“You _are_ ,” Andrew breathes. “Make it up to me.”

“I am never, never going to stop making it up to you,” James says, working his hand beneath Andrew’s boxers. Andrew cups the back of James’s neck and pulls him up to be kissed as James strokes him. He wraps his fingers around James’s own erection and drags a whole host of delicious, increasingly guttural noises from him before he spills into Andrew’s hand, biting down hard on Andrew’s collarbone and sending Andrew over the edge and into his own climax, moaning James’s name as he comes.

Afterwards, they lie there, kissing and murmuring incoherent promises to one another, hands roaming and lips wandering.

“You’re going to make me hard again,” Andrew tells him eventually. “Should’ve invited me back to the yurt.”

“At this rate we are never leaving that yurt,” James says, bending to lap at Andrew’s nipple.

“That’s fine,” Andrew says, shivering and carding his fingers through James’s hair. “We’ve got time.”

“I have to tell you,” James murmurs against his skin, “all the things I didn’t tell you months ago because I was trying so hard not to mean them.”

“James,” Andrew whispers, cradling him close.

“How brave you are,” James says, closing his eyes and resting his head against Andrew’s chest. “How fucking beautiful you are, god, and so, so patient and raw and, and effortlessly giving, how you can just pour yourself out for other people and always manage to have something left, how much you worry me, how much you make me want to wrap my arms around you and keep you safe and supported and, and how you reach inside me and — every time you smile at me you turn me into less of a selfish cynical asshole, and how all of that was you and none of it was the play. I’m so...” he drags in a breath, and Andrew tugs him up to be kissed, until James is gasping against his lips and their bodies are aligning together once more of their own volition.

“We are definitely going back to the tent,” Andrew says, unable to help making tiny abortive thrusts up into James’s hips.

“Any second,” James agrees, flicking his tongue over Andrew’s ear lobe.

“My love,” breathes Andrew. “Mon amour, mon cher, mon coeur.”

“Je t’aime,” James murmurs into his ear. “J’ai faim de toi, j’ai soif.”

“You rescued me,” Andrew says.

“You rescued _me_ ,” James smiles back. He untangles himself slowly from Andrew and gets to his feet before holding his hand out to help Andrew up.

“We are a mess of sand and unspeakable fluids,” Andrew laughs.

“I think we’re just a mess,” says James, lacing their fingers together and pulling him across the sand.

“I love you,” Andrew informs him. James’s grin is perfect, a sunbeam flooding Andrew with light.

“I love you more,” says James, herding him inside his tent, with its cool canvas shell and its pristine white bed beckoning from its center.

“Oh, is it going to be a competition?” Andrew laughs, dropping his shirt to the floor.

“I hope so,” James says, pulling Andrew against him, running his hands possessively over his back before pushing him onto the mattress.

“I’m going to win,” Andrew informs him, tugging him close.

“We both win either way, doll,” James says, helping Andrew squirm free of his last vestiges of clothing. He wriggles out of his swim trunks and gasps when their bodies come into full contact at last.

“This definitely, definitely feels like winning,” Andrew says. He winds his arms around him. “Now talk yurty to me, baby,” he grins, and James presses him down into the pillows, laughing, and keeps him there until his body is the only home Andrew needs.


End file.
